OK, now we're starting to see the real Republican Party:

In an interview with SIRUS satellite radio, the Internet's Drudge Report said Wednesday, [Alan] Keyes called Mary Cheney "a 'selfish hedonist' because she is a lesbian."

Keyes said: "The essence of ... family life remains procreation. If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it's possible to have a marriage state that in principal excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism."

Asked whether that meant Mary Cheney "is a selfish hedonist," Keyes said: "That goes by definition. Of course she is."...

--UPI/Washington Times

Of course, it's already "possible to have a marriage state that in princip[le] excludes procreation" -- it's called "letting old people marry." (Not to mention the infertile.)

Taken to its logical conclusion, Keyes's statement means that you're being a "selfish hedonist" anytime you engage in a sexual act that can't lead to a baby -- and that would extend to straight people who use birth control, and, I suppose, to married couples who have sex during pregnancy.

***

Meanwhile, The New York Times has this on a GOP confab that doesn't quite fit the moderate moderate moderate message of the party:

At a closed, invitation-only Bush campaign rally for Christian conservatives yesterday, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas called for a broad social conservative agenda notably different from the televised presentations at the Republican convention, including adopting requirements that pregnant women considering abortions be offered anesthetics for their fetuses and loosening requirements on the separation of church and state.

"We must win this culture war," Senator Brownback urged a crowd of several hundred in a packed ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel...

So, is this new bill on fetus anesthesia a sincere response to what Senator Brownback considers a social problem, or is it an opportunistic way to open a new front in the culture war? Hard to say exactly:

His call for women contemplating abortions to be offered anesthetics for the fetus referred to a bill, "The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act," that he has discussed introducing in Congress. "We are going to keep moving this agenda forward," he vowed.

Guess it's a little bit of both, isn't it?

But even though "the event was organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign 'to celebrate America and President George W. Bush,' according to a copy of the invitation," it's apparently none of your damn business if you're a heathen:

... in an e-mail message to The New York Times, Nicolle Devenish, the campaign's communications director, criticized the newspaper for covering an event that "was closed to the press" as "not professional or appropriate." A New York Times reporter was invited to the event by participants who accompanied him.

But if these folks have a monopoly on Right and Truth, why do they want to keep their light under a bushel?